But at least on xfce, notifications vanish after 10 seconds (by default), so I can’t rely on them either.
i can imagine that for “shortly showing banners” - but if there is no way to access notifications later, i’d say this is an issue with xfce - you will have troubles with all kind of notifications then.
the current design-balance around contact request is that they are notified, so you get aware. you can tap the notification to deal with the contact request. if you do not want to, then you’re done.
use cases of contact requests also have changed since chatmail as “cold emailing” has been degraded.
however, “just so” adding contact requests to the badge-counters still would cause another annoyances, as you then have to deal with each contact request more. also these counters cry “YOU HAVE STH LEFT TO DO!!111!!” - which is usually not true for contact requests. eg. you need to open each contact request or mark them as read otherwise. also, you might have more unread-badges that “stay forever”, so you will not really recognise contact requests by that. finally, contact request do not show bage counters but the string “Contact Request” - expectation for badge counters, is however, they sum up (eg. having a “10” on the account, you want to get that sum on the chat’s badge counters (having a greyish “muted” dot without a number in case there are contact requests but otherwise no unread messages may be an alternative))
for sure, all of that can be changed, and i see the point that you want to have the information also in-app. however, we need to be careful not to degrade other parts and look at effort and effect (as always : ) maybe i’ve overseen an easy way that does not degrade other things